"Elite" was written by David Braben and Ian Bell starting in 1982 while the authors were still at Cambridge University. It was first published by Acornsoft on the BBC Micro in September 1984 to huge critical acclaim. The rights to other computer platforms were then auctioned by Jacqui Lyons of Marjacq, and British Telecom then went on to publish on many other platforms under the name of Firebird, including on the PC.

I had to double check that it isn't April 1st when I first read this new item. It's got to be a joke. Just no one is laughing accept maybe McKool Smith.This comment was edited on Nov 2, 08:55.

Having done some basic 3d programming in OpenGL... ( So under this claim I can be sued!! or do I need to have made money from it? )

Surely this comes down to the graphics API ( or maybe now adays the graphics drivers/chips ) ?The game engines themselves don't normally do the math, that's all done for you.All the programmers do is give vertex coordenantes to the API and then the API does the math to render those 3d vertices to a 2D space(memory) then the gfx card renderers that to a monitor.

I'm surprised the British don't have something similar, after all they taught us everything we know on these subjects

We try and forget our previous crimes against the world, not celebrate them

Anyway, how do Brits do their Christmas shopping if they don't know when the day after Thanksgiving is?

That's another USA only tradition I guess.We start Xmas shopping anytime we feel like. Some of shops here are starting to stock Xmas stuff already.My wife buys presents all through the year and stores them in a suitcase or two, by the time xmas is close she's done all the main shopping ( spreads the cost nicely too ) so no fighting the crowds at the stores.

I guess you people in the US have no idea how fustrating and annoying it is read and see so much stuff that refers to US specific things - but with the attitude that everyone MUST know what they mean. It's a bit like brits going over to France and shouting at the French because they think if they speak loudly enouogh the French will understand them (actually most French people speak and understand English very well, they just pretend not to ).

Not too mention how annoyed I get working for a French owned company with worldwide offices and told to write documentation in American-English instead of British-English, that really hurts to do.

<Rant-Warning>Maybe an American to plan-english link is needed on this site.

When is 'Holiday Season'?? Summer holidays, xmas holidays, easter etc

It's like saying a 'Summer release' is that summer as in Northern or Southern hemisphere?

I little while ago a someone invented a thing called a calendar. It seems to have caught on, even in all those funny little countries outside the great USA.A simple conversion table for release guesses:Early summer 2005 = 2nd Quarter 2005Late summer 2005 = 3nd Quarter 2005Xmas time = 4th Quarter</Rant-Warning>

Valve is very accessable, though. Send Gabe an email and he'll respond within a few hours. Sometimes he'll respond to a rather big issue, and it winds up here.

And he's being faulted for that. Email Carmack and anyone at id and see if they'll email you back. But Valve keeps communications with the average player open and get faulted for that.

That's because carmack is too busy coding game engines ( and building rockets ) to reply to every gamer out there that wants to email him. Having said that I've read (technical) forums before where someone has mailed JC for confirmation of something and they have had a useful reply back.

Gabe on the other hand obviouly has more spare time to answer more people, good for him. Good for you, bad for everyone that's desperate to see HL2 on the shelves.

Not to mention that you would have to switch the program for every game, as Dante already mentioned... HOW can anyone call that user friendly??? IQ -200?

As opposed to any other game that you have installed on your computer? What, you keep UT2K4 running in the background while you fire up a session of Doom 3?

No you (insert cruel name here) switch programs as in close down steam and load other pub/software houses version of steam to play their game. Read my full post and maybe you can point some faults in each of the bad points I listed, or maybe give a much greater number of good points, because I sure don't see any.

I hope steam doesn't catch on.Imagine all the publishers/software houses doing it. How many demons would be running on your machine all the time?Sucking bandwidth & CPU time checking for patches and updates.Or do you try and control it so, "okay lets play HL2, fire up steam run HL2, okay bored now,quit HL2, closed down steam, fire up activisions version of steam to load game ...".

"Okay now I want to play GameX online, whose's the publisher? whats the name of their Steam product?"

All those programs, with internet access and access to your harddisks and registry, sounds like a hackers dream to me.

I don't trust Valve, they can't even keep their own machines safe from hackers. Would you trust EA or Activision to produce a secure steam type program? Microsoft can't even produce a secure webbrowser.

Then there's the issue of Spyware, tell me they won't be able to send a complete list of fav websites and installed programs back to their marketing guys.

Then what about other OS's? I'm happy to play ET, Q3, RtCW, UT2003/4 and now Doom3 on Linux. All of those games are available on Mac OS X too.

I'm happy to get game updates & patches from official websites when I choose or from Mag cover disks(DVD because they have more on them).As for the games themselves, DVD is the only sensible alternative to 3/4/5/6 CD's

For a while I couldn't choose a DVD player for home, while I made up my mind I watched lots of dvds on my computer from my sofa(couch for the yanks) using TV out on my video card and the sound via my stereo.

I don't know about you guys but I prefer to buy the DVD editions of computer mags, you get more demos, mods, game movies & patches etc than the two 2cd versions.

I get errors in startup too but it does run okay.I think there is a problem with you gfx driver somehow.I also have quake3 running.I'm using 61.11 on Suse 8.2 LinuxMy laptop is only a GF4 4200GONOTE: sound failed because I was a different user then the user that started the X system.

"Just in case anyone is interested PC Gamer in the UK has reviewed HL2 and given it a 96%."

THat doesn't mean anything. They also gave Doom 3 94% if I recall correctly. A figure not worthy of the game.

It's just a opinion. Personally I loved Doom3 and think they underscored it.

Gravity gun sounds like fun, a gimmick, but it sounds like it's the gimmick that 'makes the game fun'. I mean really, so some guy runs out and starts shooting at you, so you shout "hold on a sec, just let me use this gravity gun to suck that radiator of the wall to use as a shield" so assuming it has enough power to rip the thing of the wall and bring it hurtling toward us, does it then reverse the field so you don't get flattened by it? I guess the AI is coded to miss for the first 5 seconds or so to give to time to suck some piece of furniture to use as a shield.

I'm still looking forward to playing with a gravity gun in Doom3, just for laughs. Someone already has a working prototype able to pull physics objects and bodies towards the player and then throw them again.The vechicals will be fun too ( I played the leaked HL2 non-alpha, non-alpha because it whould have to be a lot closer to compelte to be an alpha, as in it still needed another year. ), looking forward to the Doom3 SDK with it's promised map with vechical support.

Looks like some of the characters have a reasonable SINGLE shadow but everything else looks like standard lightmaps. It's nice see a 'modern engine' that looks no different from any other engine from more that two years ago.

The only remotely impressive things in any of those screenshots is the magnifing glass in pic 19, the water(as good has Farcry? maybe) and the level of detail in the charactors faces not bad.

Nice to see all those years weren't wasted just trying to do something impressive with a new engine. I expect the gameplay to the best thing ever, because the engine looks like it's lacking, nothing to seperate it from any other engine.

I get a feeling it will be good just looking at the outdoor shots. After the dark closet of DOOM, this is what a 2004 game engine is supposed to offer people. Wide open vistas, light, colorful models, light, many different interesting characters, not PDA messages, light. Did I say light? You can actually see the game you paid money to buy?

Yes there is lots of light in HL2, just like the original engine or the quake2 engine or the quake3 engine or the unreal engine etc etc.Doom3 was set indoor in a space station with failing power, surprisingly it was dark in places due to a lack of light and/or power. What it was full of was reealtme shadows and damn good realtme lighting interaction off all the surfaces and monsters etc.With a few simple console commands "Let there be light!":set r_lightScale “5”set r_skipDiffuse “1”set r_skipBump “1”set r_brightness “1.5"Now Doom3 almost matches HL2, of cause it looks like shit though.

HL2 looks like some characters have a reasonable SINGLE shadow but everything else looks like standard lightmaps. It's nice see a 'modern engine' that looks no different from any other engine from more that two years ago.

The only remotely impressive things in any of those screenshots is the magnifing glass in pic 19, the water(as good has Farcry? maybe) and the level of detail in the charactors faces.

Of course if you install a game and find your attention span is not enough to complete the game then that's your lose and it's your money wasted. Personly I like to get my moneys worth and expand games with new maps and mods etc.